Articles: palliative-care.
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In the context of an ageing population, many healthcare professionals have limited experience and confidence in having necessary advance care planning (ACP) conversations. ⋯ Multidisciplinary simulation training is an effective way to teach ACP to doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals. The simulation was shown to improve participant understanding, confidence and reduce barriers to discussions, both immediately and 3 months later.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2022
Transitioning to Remote Recruitment and Intervention: A Tale of Two Palliative Care Research Studies Enrolling Underserved Populations during COVID-19.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, community-based research studies experienced prolonged shutdowns unless able to pivot to remote study procedures. ⋯ Future community- and home-based palliative care trials must consider the best way to utilize remote recruitment, enrollment, and data collection processes to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Researchers should consider technology accessibility and train staff to ensure the greatest possible opportunity to recruit underserved populations who have traditionally been underrepresented in research studies.
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Patients with life-threatening disease should be informed about the diagnosis and prognosis of life-expectancy. Breaking bad news (BBN) by a clinician may be affected not only by their lack of communication skills but also their philosophy of life, beliefs, fear of their own death, their length of tenure, and their exposure to dying and death. ⋯ Fear of death may restrain inexperienced medical professionals from BBN to patients and makes it difficult. Working in palliative care augments the determination of philosophy of life and diminishes fear of death. The higher the determination of philosophy of life, the more likely BBN is to be performed. Philosophy of life, spirituality, and communication skills should be addressed in postgraduate education.
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This is the fifth article in the psychological elements of palliative care series. This series focuses on how key concepts from psychotherapy can be used in the context of palliative care to improve communication and fine tune palliative care interventions. In this article, we discuss attachment-the system by which people form bonds in relationships. ⋯ Our patients all express unique relational needs to us; some of our patients need closeness and reassurance to feel comfortable, others value independence and space. These needs are highly significant to palliative care clinicians; they inflect our patients' goals of care and values, they modulate our patients' psychosocial needs, and they elucidate the ways our patients respond to a range of therapeutic interventions. Understanding attachment gives us a window into these individual care needs and empowers us to tailor the care we provide for a wide range of patients.
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Utilization of inpatient palliative care services (PCS) has been infrequently studied in patients with cardiac arrest complicating acute myocardial infarction (AMI-CA). ⋯ Despite an increase in PCS use in AMI-CA, it remains significantly underutilized highlighting the role for further integrating of these specialists in AMI-CA care.